What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Steamflogger Boss]

Vandal Hearts on the ole PS1.

[BIL]

also bonus puny-jackknife home invasion little honey better close that door fast

Spoiler

I read that as "Violence And Fuck," I'm going to bed and then undoubtedly hell

[FinalBaton]

I read that as "Violence And Fuck," I'm going to bed and then undoubtedly hell

[Blinge]

Oh nooo

[Sumez]

Bumboclaat.

This is beautiful

[BIL]

Sankyuu

[Marc]

You peeps need to stop with the SOTN talk. I know I never found half the cool stuff in that game, and you're making me want to fire it up again, but I have a massive backlog of R2RKMF / arcade adventure tyre stuff, including ROTN!

[BIL]

SOTN will wait. ;3 Inimitably revisitable game.

[WelshMegalodon]

E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

This game is literally a randomizer before randomizers became popular. Getting the hang of the map is rather tricky, but once you've done that, it's not terribly difficult. I'm glad that more people are aware of that these days.

[vol.2]

a wish that was ultimately answered by the more speedy and Search and Destroy oriented doujin games by Team Ladybug.

Decided to try out the ROLW game and it's a lot of fun. I would be over the moon if there was a story-oriented game, but this is a lot of fun and a good break from the endless item farming of ROTM.

Thanks for the recommendation.

[Stevens]

Started another party in Wasteland 2, while waffling about buying 3.

Anyway this is the type of shit I thought Cyberpunk would be - Choices with actual consequences. Ag Center or Highpool? I've never gone for AG Center and this is my 3rd playthrough.

The entire game gives you this kind of stuff in every location you visit. Multiple factions - of which you align yourself with some, or none as you play. You truly are given total freedom in how you approach the game's world. Want to help people? Do it. Want to gun everyone down? You can do that too - and it will absolutely affect your play. The game has endings for pretty much any combination of things you can do or fail to do in each location with each set of characters.

Spoiler

You can legit "save" the world or help destroy it.

[Blackfielding]

Atm it is World of Warcraft. I like its gameplay and graphics. My cousin is fanatic about the game and made me accompany him in the raids I try to help him as much as I can https://skycoach.gg/wow-boost.

[Marc]

Started another party in Wasteland 2, while waffling about buying 3.

Anyway this is the type of shit I thought Cyberpunk would be - Choices with actual consequences. Ag Center or Highpool? I've never gone for AG Center and this is my 3rd playthrough.

The entire game gives you this kind of stuff in every location you visit. Multiple factions - of which you align yourself with some, or none as you play. You truly are given total freedom in how you approach the game's world. Want to help people? Do it. Want to gun everyone down? You can do that too - and it will absolutely affect your play. The game has endings for pretty much any combination of things you can do or fail to do in each location with each set of characters.

Spoiler

You can legit "save" the world or help destroy it.

I like the sound of this. I've got Planescape Torment on the 'to-do' list. One of those I've heard so much about it seemed silly not to pick up the PS4 disc for a tenner.

[guigui]

Started another party in Wasteland 2, while waffling about buying 3.

Anyway this is the type of shit I thought Cyberpunk would be - Choices with actual consequences. Ag Center or Highpool? I've never gone for AG Center and this is my 3rd playthrough.

The entire game gives you this kind of stuff in every location you visit. Multiple factions - of which you align yourself with some, or none as you play. You truly are given total freedom in how you approach the game's world. Want to help people? Do it. Want to gun everyone down? You can do that too - and it will absolutely affect your play. The game has endings for pretty much any combination of things you can do or fail to do in each location with each set of characters.

Spoiler

You can legit "save" the world or help destroy it.

If you like these Choice and Consequence games, you could also try Atom RPG, on the PC and recently ver well ported to the Nintendo Switch.
I played both Atom and WL2, and found that Atom is actually better written. Of course you can see that it has a smaller budget, but the team made an excellent work on the lore and stories in here.

Of course, if not done already, definitely give Fallout 1 and 2 a try on the plain old MS DOS. Fallout New Vegas was pretty nicely written too, if you can stand the FPS setting.

[Marc]

Friend sold me a 2DS rammed with a bunch of games. Playing Pilotwings Resort at the moment, absolutely love it. Why we haven't had another of these remains a mystery to me. Nothing to blow up I guess.

Fuck that shitty circle pad thing though.

[WelshMegalodon]

Fallout 2 isn't a DOS game.

[vol.2]

Fallout 2 isn't a DOS game.

AFAIK, FO1 is also windows only on version 1.2 (which is what patches updated it to). They included a dos *.exe in retail versions of the game for compatibility reasons, but I think the game was always a windows 95 game, (more or less) and rereleases of FO1 don't generally come with the *.exe file.

[guigui]

Oh, sorry about the mistake with Fallout being DOS game. I just said that because I thought I read people using Dosbox to play these days ?

[vol.2]

people using Dosbox to play these days ?

If my memory serves;

you can play FO1 on dosbox if you 1) have the retail version that included a dos executable or 2) you go through the process of replacing the windows executable with a dos-compiled one and download and install some tools to handle the sound or there will not be sound.

FO2 + FOT rely on DirectX in windows and cannot be run in dos.

[WelshMegalodon]

Oh, sorry about the mistake with Fallout being DOS game. I just said that because I thought I read people using Dosbox to play these days ?

It's actually possible to install Windows 95 in DOSBox, though it isn't that reliable and DOSBox doesn't officially support it. There isn't much reason to do so these days since PCem exists, but people will do anything to avoid spending money on a better PC.

[Mischief Maker]

Heroes of Hammerwatch

I really shouldn't like it, as I have a blanket hatred for unlock cancer, but somehow HoH makes it work.

Heroes of Hammerwatch is an overhead mouse-WASD roguelite very reminiscent of the original Gauntlet with a heavy emphasis on between-playthrough upgrades to your village. For my tastes, it hits the sweet spot between arcade action and RPG that games like Diablo or Cadash missed.

The thing that finally made the game "click" for me is realizing you aren't playing and leveling up a single hero, you're roleplaying as an entire hero's guild. Stick with a single character and you'll soon bang your head against power ceilings because the town doesn't upgrade as fast as your single dude. But each class of character grants a permanent partywide bonus the first time they kill each boss (paladin gives an armor bonus, sorcerer gives a mana regen bonus, thief gives a gold multiplier, etc) and the more you focus on beating the bosses with all 7 characters (9 with DLCs) the smoother the power curve unlocks. Plus your guild has an experience bar seperate from heroes that's upgraded by achievements instead of XP, and leveling up the guild with easier characters like the ranger make for a smoother start for the more difficult classes like the priest thanks to the extra skill points. It honestly feels less like grinding unlock cancer in Everspace and more like regular leveling grind.

Gameplay-wise it plays like a twin-stick shooter that steadily grows in speed and complexity as your guild and heroes level up. Enemies start out slow and dumb and attacking in mass crowds, and by later levels things get downright bullet-hellish. Likewise your heroes start out fairly slow with a basic shot and a desperation move, but by late game they're juggling three active skills and zipping all over the battlefield while enjoying movement bonuses from kill-streak combos. It's really satisfying how the game opens up for you the more you unlock.

For downsides, the two things that kept me from getting into this game for years are the first area having the ugliest graphics and lamest music. Fortunately after the first boss dies you can use a shortcut to get to the later more interesting levels. The game indicates the paladin is the easiest starting character and that is NOT the case (except for arrow traps), the easiest starting character is the ranger, with more melee-focused characters being way trickier. The pixel art-quality for this game is middling to below-average. And if you want a game that is fully playable from beginning to end on the first try with all its mechanics available from the start, this ain't it.

Hits a sweet spot for me that no other action/RPG hybrid has done before, and it's a podcast/news game par excellence. Most absorbing indie since Heat Signature.

[floralcateyes]

Just got through AREA 4349, a twin-stick shooter by DeathMofuMofu, whose previous game was Neko Navy. NN's a lot more polished, but I enjoyed A4349 well enough.

On mouse and keyboard, it controls as you'd expect. WASD for movement, mouse to aim, left click for primary weapon, right click for sub-weapon. Primary weapon is your main ranged attack which you'll probably use the most for survival play. Sub-weapon is a melee with a little wind-up and some cool down. You also get a special attack that's tied to a recharging gauge. Fills up slowly by itself, but you can also charge it by picking up green orbs dropped by crates and other destructibles. Once it's filled up, you hold down the melee button, wait for a diamond-shaped gauge around your character to fill up, then release. The game calls the special attack a "bomb," but it doesn't eat bullets, and you can't really use it as a panic move since you have to hold the button down and wait for a bit. You can just keep the button held down so that you can unleash your special at a moment's notice, but that does prevent you from using your melee.

Sub-weapon is more or less the same melee attack for all three characters (though the timings feel slightly different). They differ in their primary and special attacks. The first character, Yakuza dude with a tengu mask, has your standard, rapid straight shot as his primary weapon. Excellent reach; ended up killing enemies who were still off-screen with it. His special has him throw explosives in front of him, resulting in an arc of flames that persist for a while and damage any enemies that walk into or stand in them. Feels like the beginner's character. Second character is a white-haired schoolgirl with oni horns. Her primary's a narrow, flamethrower-esque weapon with very short range. Her special, however, beefs up her primary, giving a significant boost to its damage and reach. The buff lasts for a pretty long time. Third character is a... stoner bassist? Holding down the primary weapon button makes her blast out an AoE attack in a small circle around her. Her special summons a bunch of spectral bass guitars that fly around and kill things. Seems to shift the focus from actually aiming to getting in the middle of enemies and timing her attacks right.

The game has five stages, each divided into sub-sections. Continuing after death starts you off at the beginning of a section. You also play each stage individually; afaik you can't choose to play all five in a single run. Only the first stage is available when you start, but beating a stage unlocks the next one for all characters. They're mostly just rectangular rooms connected by corridors. Sometimes, a door will close behind you when entering a big room, preventing you from using corridor corners as cover. Nothing super interesting. Takes a little under an hour to get through all five stages.

Enemies are okay but kinda lack variety. If you're using tengue dude or are quick enough, you'll most often be killing enemies before they get their shots off. Most mooks pause before firing aimed shots or semi-aimed patterns. You move fast, so you're better off misdirecting and macrododging these, usually by circling around enemies, rather than trying to micrododge the patterns. There doesn't seem to be any bullet-sealing though, so circling around to bait an attack is usually the safest move if you're going for a melee. Bigger enemies still mostly use aimed shots, but they frequently add radial spreads to these as well. Getting hit pauses the game for a split second to let you register the hit, gives you a short period of mercy invincibility, and takes a chunk of your healthbar. It's not the kind of game where you'll be tanking a bunch of small bullets with no visible effect.

Scoring is based on lenient chains and grazing. Melee kills give you a multiplier that maxes out at x8 and has a generous timer. Timer is reset with more melee kills. You can also reset the timer and earn some points by grazing, though I found this to be more consistent with bosses and larger enemies. Any kills with your special give you a x10 multiplier, whose timer you can reset via melee, grazing, or more special attack kills. You can earn a multiplier by using your melee or special attack on crates, so that's an easy source of points. The buff from oni girl's special also allows her primary to generate x10 multiplies for the duration of said buff. I imagine a scoring run would involve using melee as much as possible and probably milking graze points from some enemies (didn't bother to check if they time out).

All of that's kinda moot though, as there doesn't seem to be a scoreboard for the stages. The game only tracks your total points earned for each character and for all three combined, as far as I can tell. I guess you can manually keep note of your PBs for each stage, but the game doesn't seem to do that for you.

It's all in all a fairly decent, if shallow, romp. Was looking for a doujin/indie twin-stick shooter that isn't a rougelike, so I enjoyed it well enough. Doesn't feel like something you could spend much time and effort on though.

[null1024]

Oh, sorry about the mistake with Fallout being DOS game. I just said that because I thought I read people using Dosbox to play these days ?

It's actually possible to install Windows 95 in DOSBox, though it isn't that reliable and DOSBox doesn't officially support it. There isn't much reason to do so these days since PCem exists, but people will do anything to avoid spending money on a better PC.

DOSBox-X officially claims support for setting up 95, but it also seems a lot less convenient than just using PCem.

[Stevens]

Still poking through the Wasteland.

Just went back to the Rail Nomads Camp - seriously a sad part of the story if you can't figure out how to get them to kiss and make up. I've played three times and only gotten them to make up once. Got a less desirable outcome this time.

I guess I am off to Damonta next.

[ED-057]

6) 東方蒼神縁起-週末. I had a dlsite coupon so I bought this.

Despite being a DX9 game, it checks for the presence of D3DX10_37.DLL in the relevant system directory and if it is not found then it will claim that DirectX isn't up to date and refuse to run. After manually adding the file then the game runs on Windows 2000.

It's fairly similar to Touhou Labyrinth 2. Doesn't have the weird manual leveling-up, but it's also very linear so far.

[Vanguard]

Despite being a DX9 game, it checks for the presence of D3DX10_37.DLL in the relevant system directory and if it is not found then it will claim that DirectX isn't up to date and refuse to run. After manually adding the file then the game runs on Windows 2000.

It's fairly similar to Touhou Labyrinth 2. Doesn't have the weird manual leveling-up, but it's also very linear so far.

I played a bit of Sappheiros but dropped it because I didn't think the bland encounters were worth enduring for the sake of the challenging bosses. Labyrinth of Touhou 1 and 2 are similar, but I recommend them because their boss density is much higher.

[Sengoku Strider]

Is it just me, or is Genesis Shadow Dancer a tighter game than Revenge of Shinobi? Revenge has been put in the hall of fame while Shadow rarely gets mentioned, but I'm wondering if that's just because everybody had Revenge through various multi-game carts/discs.

Shinobi -> Shadow Dancer and Revenge -> Shinobi III feel like two different series. Just the health meter alone changes everything.

[mycophobia]

What got titled "Revenge of Shinobi" and "Shinobi III" in the US are indeed basically a different series; their JP titles are "The Super Shinobi" and "The Super Shinobi 2", whereas Shadow Dancer is kind of a spin-off of AC Shadow Dancer, which is of course the sequel to AC Shinobi.

But yeah the Super series is definitely a bit slower, the first one feeling quite sluggish and clumsy imo

[BIL]

Revenge/Super is an archetypal assault course memoriser. An expert can bulldoze it with ninja efficiency, and there's considerable tactical freedom in its CQC, crossguard and doublejump mechanics, but played blind - fuhgeddaboudit. Fuuuckouttaheeya. The combination of tight camera and scroll-happy stage design plus savage powerdown on damage will keep you groping in the dark until you've taken your licks and become Rutger Hauer in that one Look Ma, I'm The White Zatoichi flick.

I do love it but I suspect its near-universal mainstream acclaim is more to do with the (at the time, and imo still quite) super-cohesive near-future ninja style. Castlevania Bloodlines and Alien Soldier are progressively better-staged examples of the same Powerdown On Damage / Sup Boss Imma Shove You In This Woodchipper curve.

Chronicle Of The Bellend Slicer
A Ninja Discovers Comedy
Just One Thing Ahnuld, I Forgot To Buy A Rubber

Some fun to be had. (｀ω´メ)

Worth noting for fans of SS1/SS2 that the Saturn's Shin Shinobi Den aka Legions aka X is effectively the third game in this sub-series, and while Revenge gets BIG BOUNS for its look, Den tends to get slated for its cheesy Tokusatsu styling. Despite the shamefur effort (witness SS2's superhumanly spine-shattering divekick return as the poor cousin of Unca Scrooge's pogo bounce) it plays alright imo. Some neat ideas like giving the sword its own button, and making it more of an equal partner opposite shuriken. Some advanced enemies will send your shuriken right back at you, but because Den's devs obviously like SS2's hidden six-button mode, you can just block on reaction.

Level design's a bit flabby in spots but it's better than it's commonly made out to be, certainly at the time, when most mags were mongling Tom Zito's microscopic chode. The rolling katana somersault is badass, genuinely near-Ninja Five O smooth (now that is some nice rolling! ). I always miss its innovations when I return to the MD games. Would make a rad arrange mode backporting them somehow.

[Sengoku Strider]

What got titled "Revenge of Shinobi" and "Shinobi III" in the US are indeed basically a different series; their JP titles are "The Super Shinobi" and "The Super Shinobi 2", whereas Shadow Dancer is kind of a spin-off of AC Shadow Dancer, which is of course the sequel to AC Shinobi.

You know, I had the Japanese titles in the back of my head as I was typing that. but the neuron that puts 1+1 together didn't fire on that one. Given Sega's localization at the time I should probably just be thankful it wasn't titled Thundening Ninja or something.

But yeah the Super series is definitely a bit slower, the first one feeling quite sluggish and clumsy imo

I think III is excellent, but Revenge, yeah, clunky is the word that always comes to mind. I don't even feel like it's an "of its time" thing when Ninja Gaiden & other NES standouts had already set a higher bar.

Worth noting for fans of SS1/SS2 that the Saturn's Shin Shinobi Den aka Legions aka X is effectively the third game in this sub-series, and while Revenge gets BIG BOUNS for its look, Den tends to get slated for its cheesy Tokusatsu styling. Despite the shamefur effort (witness SS2's superhumanly spine-shattering divekick return as the poor cousin of Unca Scrooge's pogo bounce) it plays alright imo. Some neat ideas like giving the sword its own button, and making it more of an equal partner opposite shuriken. Some advanced enemies will send your shuriken right back at you, but because Den's devs obviously like SS2's hidden six-button mode, you can just block on reaction.

Level design's a bit flabby in spots but it's better than it's commonly made out to be, certainly at the time, when most mags were mongling Tom Zito's microscopic chode. The rolling katana somersault is badass, genuinely near-Ninja Five O smooth (now that is some nice rolling! ). I always miss its innovations when I return to the MD games. Would make a rad arrange mode backporting them somehow.

I have this game but didn't play it for long. Maybe I just need to give it more time but it felt kind of...I dunno, floaty?